Back Issues: Catch-XXII

In the summer of 1994, the House of Representatives was considering a health-care bill that was close to President Bill Clinton’s plan, but its counterpart in the Senate had already been watered down. Even though the Senate had a Democratic majority, Republicans, then as now, threatened that they would invoke Senate Rule XXII and filibuster, which essentially meant that Democrats would need sixty votes.

It’s true that the framers did not specify that the Senate would do its normal business by simple majority vote, but that’s because it didn’t occur to them that they had to specify it, any more than it occurred to them to specify that senators should not dunk each other’s powdered wigs in the inkwells. For, as the Supreme Court noted in 1892, “the general rule of all parliamentary bodies” that “when a majority is present, the act of a majority of the quorum is the act of the body…has been the rule for all time.”…. Unfortunately, the Court, which is extremely shy of challenging the internal workings of Congress, is not about to outlaw filibusters.

This time around, Democrats have a sixty-vote majority.

The entire article—and the complete archives of The New Yorker, back to 1925—is available to subscribers. Non-subscribers can purchase the individual issue.

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